First Try at Stock Refinishing - 311H

So I picked up a 20ga Savage/Stevens 311H a couple of months ago - the wood's finish was about at 'meh' as you could get...

Recently ordered a semi finished set from Gunstocksinc. The grain was nice, but the stock was waaayyy too thick, and the forend had a nice chip off the front. I said 'forget it' and took to refinishing the old stock...

Thanks to the info on Trapshooters; found the Armor-all/tru-oil trick off rimfirecentral. Added in a little bit of varnish to give the stock some extra color. This only took me a few hours, and came out okay...I rushed it, so while the pics look somewhat decent...it's still a bit rough and you can see where I failed to properly sand/smooth things out. Couldn't get all of the old finish off the 'checkering', but whatever. Overall, not too shabby.

Used Citristrip; let it sit for about an hour and a half, came back and took a scouring pad (00x I think) to strip it off. Then cleaned with mineral spirits. Even with three different brushes, couldn't get the stuff between the checkering unfortunately. Ah well

As for the armor-all trick-

Allows to alot more coats in a given time frame - some chemical reaction takes place between whatever's in the armor-all with the tru-oil: